NAMRU-3 has a detachment in Ghana that is currently running studies in acute febrile illness and leishmania but will most likely begin work in acute respiratory infection, diarrheal disease and zoonotic pathogens in the very near future. So I've been in Ghana this week working with the local team to get set up for all these upcoming studies.
The detachment is housed within the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) which is part of the University of Ghana, so tonight, after a long day in the office and the laboratory, one of the Ghanaian professors with whom we were working invited us to join him for a drink. He's the head of one of the five colleges within the university (the University of Ghana is set up on the Oxford model) so we joined him at the faculty lounge of his college. After a brief tour of the college, we sat back and relaxed with he and several other faculty members.
There were a few things that made this experience - which would have been completely normal in Rwanda or any other African country - noticably different from any situation one could imagine in Egypt:
- It was quiet and peaceful, and we were surrounded by greenery.
- Everyone around the table was drinking beer.
- We (by which I mean myself and my colleague, Lisa) sat down at a table of seven men (all Ghanaian except one) and no one batted an eye or treated us as though we were any different from any of them.
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